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Irish Farmers Association (IFA) livestock chair Brendan Golden says beef factories are currently filling orders for the lucrative Christmas market as supplies of suitably finished prime cattle tighten and said this should lead to a rise in beef price.
Golden said that Irish beef prices have lagged behind the Bord Bia prime export benchmark price by upwards of 30c/kg for the past number of weeks and warned that this is not acceptable.
He said factories “can and must do more” to return the value of the market to farmers.
Throughput to drop
The IFA livestock chair suggested that the projected increase in the cattle kill for the year has already come through the system, with over 120,000 more cattle processed to date.
He said that numbers are now expected to drop in line with last year’s throughput or below this for the remainder of the year.
“Last week’s throughput showed a drop of 1,500 head in steer numbers alone and these are the prime cattle factories need to fill the supermarket orders for the Christmas market,” he said.
Golden described how there are “very few grass cattle” left on the ground and claimed that factories will have to come forward with strong and meaningful beef price increases to entice farmers to short-finish cattle in sheds and have them available over the coming weeks to fill Christmas orders.
Deals
The beef farmer said deals are already being done, as cracks appear in the stranglehold factories have had on prices over the past few weeks and it is important farmers sell hard to take back control of the market conditions.
Golden said there is up to 20c/kg of a difference in quotes and prices paid to farmers, with very few farmers now accepting the lower quotes offered by some factories.
He said factories and retailers are “acutely aware” of the production costs beef farmers are exposed to for this winter and called for beef prices to increase to €5.85/kg to €6.00/kg.
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